Egypt: MENA's largest market by far. (Image via Wamda)

This is a crosspost with Yaoota Magazine.

Egyptian shoppers are a different animal to those in Dubai or Beirut. They have different payment methods - Fawry and prepaid versus credit cards for a start - and they're even split differently along gender lines, as we reported last week.

As Egypt's population is twice as big as the next largest state in MENA it's important to understand the whims and fancies of the Egyptian shopper. And with total monthly visits to ecommerce sites touching between 12-18 million hits, it's got a long way grow (a typical news portal might see 17-20 million visits in a month.

It's a tempting market, luring in both foreign investors and foreign entrants such as Jumia and Souq, and well worth studying.